De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

"Did you have a good Christmas, Mark?" This is the question I have heard a hundred times since the 25th December and it is a question I find very difficult to answer, mostly because the answer is one that no one wants to hear. This is not because I am a modern day Scrooge, but perhaps best articulated by my oldest son, who, when I asked him if he was looking forward to Christmas on the 24th, said "thing is Dad, you just keep looking over your shoulder and wondering where Ruth is." Ever will it be thus. And though Christmas day was as happy as one might expect, there is always an empty place where my little girl should have been. There is also a shadow cast by all the Christmases of the past and the hopes and dreams they represented growing up. Faced with all that potent nostalgia, I cannot help but compare where I am now with the promise I held in my heart as a child: the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight . Christmas, then, becomes a...

This isn't going to be a long, torturous post. Just something little that happened to me this morning and smacked me right between the eyes. The point of it is to try and put into words the way in which we (people suffering a bereavement) cope. I mean when you loose a child, it just doesn't ever go away. Every day feels as fresh and as raw, as every other. Your loss feels just as immediate, just as visceral, just as poignant as it did yesterday, last week, last year. You might think you get over it, but I don't think that's true (or even possible). Rather you integrate the reality with your every day life. It becomes part of you, somewhat like the way a chronic illness, a scar, or a lost limb becomes part of you. Faced with the enormity of this you might wonder how it is possible to cope at all. To be honest, if one stops to think too long about it, one starts to wonder that as well. To address this, I want to speak honestly about the reality, but also to offer some...